Saturday, September 6, 2008

The best attempt I've seen yet to capture what it is about Sarah Palin

Bill Whittle, at National Review, nails it -- at least, this is precisely why I've been walking on air ever since I found out that Palin was McCain's choice. He even has the italics in the right place:

She is so absolutely, remarkably, spectacularly ordinary. I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer. Sarah Palin has erupted from this collective American Dream — the idea that, given nothing but classic American values like hard work, integrity, and tough-minded optimism you can actually do what happens in the movies: become Leader of the Free World, the President of the United States of America. (Or, well, you know, vice president.)

...

A candidate who is young, funny, well-spoken, intelligent, charming, drop-dead gorgeous — and one of ours? Is this actually happening?

Exactly, exactly, exactly, he has word-for-word (literally!) exactly the same reaction I had when the news broke that McCain was going to name Palin as his running mate: "Is this actually happening?" (Okay, I exaggerate: I think my exact words -- which I blurted out loud even though I was alone at the time -- were, "Are you kidding me? Is this really happening? Are you kidding me?" So it wasn't literally word-for-word the same reaction. My apologies for the hyperbole.)

One of the many, many signs that the Obama campaign is as clueless as...sorry, simile fails me...clueless beyond what one would have thought to be the limits of human cluelessness, is this: they have come out, even after that speech, complaining with a straight face and apparent sincerity that Sarah Palin is out of touch with ordinary people. Sarah Palin?!? Sarah Palin is out of touch with ordinary people?!?? Sarah Palin, whose speech and (more importantly) personality and character so moved and exhilarated my non-political farmboy father, who so far as I know has never in his life donated a penny to any political party, and who watched the speech because he was curious about Palin after hearing me say I was excited about her...Sarah Palin, who so moved and exhilarated my father, I say, that he literally couldn't sleep for the rest of that night?!?? (Why bother to sleep if you already feel like you're dreaming?) The Sarahcuda, who is the first candidate in my lifetime to walk onto the national stage and instantly cause an entire nationful of ordinary, hard-working, blue-collar men and women (including undercover-in-Whitecollarville, stealth-redneck operatives like yours truly) to leap to their feet in incredulous delight and say, "Oh my God, I know that woman!!"??? Barack Obama, who has lived his entire life (even his childhood) in the emotional and intellectual sterility of the academic hard Left and in the radical activist movement that sees nothing controversial or unusual in trying to be a Saul-Alinsky-style community organizer, or in hanging out with the Weathermen, or in the Jew-hating, paranoid ravings of Jeremiah Wright -- Barack Obama is in touch with ordinary Americans and Sarah Palin isn't?

It's obvious that even now, Barack Obama has no idea what hit him.

But he bloody well knows he's been hit.

I owe a hat tip on that article to Rachel Lucas (warning: that particular post is okay but if you go spelunking about the rest of her blog, be warned that she rather aggressively has no children and therefore goes to no trouble whatsoever to stay family-friendly). Rachel is also a completely smitten (politically, that is) Sarahcuda fan, and indeed I believe it's Rachel who coined the "Sarahcuda" moniker that (like "Shrub" for Dubya, The Little Bush) is, as soon as you've heard it, the obviously correct tag for the Thrilla from Wasilla. (I was pretty proud of that last one until (a) I saw it someplace else, so apparently it's pretty obvious and there's nothing special about having thought it up, and (b) I saw "Sarahcuda" and knew, "That's the one.")

Rachel, by the way, is into creating her own demotivational posters, and she's having a field day with Palin posters. I presume (since lots of them get e-mailed to her by other people) that they aren't copyrighted, or at least that there's no objection to they were meant to be shared with the wide, wide world, and therefore I happily pass on to you this one, from a post Rachel entitles happily, "Palin makes me want to dance:"